Silver: Are you ****** kidding me!? Can't you see the big ahh fleet of ships in the back and this damn coat?
Guard: Please try to understand general, this was the order of the association.
Silver: More like the orders of those greedy politicians. *Turns to petro* Take care of whatever 'Formalities' these punks have here. I will going out first.
Guard: BUT TH-
Petro: *putting his hand on the guard's shoulder* Stand down brat, or even those bastards at the association will not be able to put you together again.
Without a care about any public image or law, Silver took to the skies alongside the caged Sonic and together they both begins breezing through the air.
[Quick note- Sonic still can't speak properly, so they straight up strapped a small speaker with keyboard onto his arm that he uses to talk.]
Sonic: This place has changed a lot. Back then there wasn't a single street that didn't have a patrol of robots looking for us.
Silver: *disgusted* Stop that wise talk, You ain't some hundred year old man.
Sonic: Welp, it was worth a try. Can you get me a child-
Silver: No.
Sonic: what if I say pl-
Silver: No.. not until we reach tails.
Sonic: Heartless punk, A guy can't even have a snack now can he? I have my rights.
Silver: Which ones? *Sarcastically with a arrogant smile* I don't remember alloyans having any rights. Nobody would mind even if I turned you into a road decoration.
Hearing Silver's words, Sonic quickly shut his mouth and begins looking around like a lost kitten.
The mere sight food stalls on the streets below were enough for Sonic to imagine himself drowing in a mountain of food but he kept shut and just looked around with a tint of envy.
The streets were bustling, people and vehicles zooming around non-stop and occasionally he would watch somebody jumping around on the rooftops or the alleys.
Alongside the people, there were also a multitude of adapters going around, their identities pretty evident from different types of matching clothes they wore which made them stick out like sore thumbs.
Sonic: There are quite a lot of them don't they? The guild members I mean.
Silver: Well people always find ways to make money, even the alloyans haven't managed to escape from Greed of the masses.. You see that over there?
Silver pointed at a giant tower floating mid-air between four different buildings for literal no reason except show off.
Silver: That's the association or ass-ociation as I call it. The gathering place of those bastards who think they are above the law after becoming a adapter or something.
Sonic: the soldiers told me about them, the people who buy everything from it's members even if it was some illegal drug something, Kinda want to visit them honestly.
Silver: You better not. They will disassemble your pathetic self into a bunch of metal scrap on first sight.
Sonic: Scary.
*******
Time passed as the duo flew over the city and watched as the crowds and housing became less and less frequent until the city became a jungle of concrete and talk building where the roads was barely in sight.
The farther they went, the taller the buildings went until they begin reaching the duo themselves and they had to begin making turns high above in the sky to crashing in one of them.
It kept going and going until Suddenly the buildings were gone. Not physically gone but left behind as they reached a massive clearing where Sonic could see a single soul as far as his gaze went.
All he could watch were waves upon waves of robots that moves massive amounts of cargo and a unsettling amount of soldiers that were enough to overwhelm even him for a moment.
Sonic: *confused* What is this place?
Silver: The Heart of the new Mobius. Welcome to Metal madness zone.
Sonic: *furious* who named this crap?
Silver: Shadow did. You got a prob-
Sonic: *wheeze* Shadow? I knew his naming sense sucked but this is beyond my expectations, who even gave him the naming rights?
???: I did myself, You got a problem with that you bastard?
Sonic felt shivers running down his skin as he and Silver slowly turned around to find themselves face to face with the war general of the new Mobius, Shadow the hedgehog himself.
Silver: Hey. Um.. Aren't you supposed to be on the moon or something today?
Shadow: That fox called me, Said it was important so I had to ditch a lot of work to come here. But *A chaos emerald in hand* why the hell are you talking with a alloyan?
Silver: can we talk at the base instead?
Shadow looks around, his gaze falling on Sonic who looked awfully familiar to him and had to hold back a indescribable urge to just kick him away.
He turned around, giving the duo of Sonic and Silver a simple gaze before chaos controlling himself away.
Sonic: Not even a lift? Will it hurt you to give us a quick ride?
Shadow: *appears behind Sonic* Yes. *Kicks sonic in the face and warps away again*
Silver meanwhile, looked at the comical interaction between the two and burst out in a rare laugh as tried to hold back his joyful tears while Sonic looked like he just experienced the worst day of his life.
Sonic: I will get back at him for this. Just wait till I recover back to my prime you Ultimate Fraud.
Silver: *holding back the tears* J-Just stop. Phew *deep breaths* Give a moment or two.
Silver thereby spent the next 2 minutes pulling back the composure he had lost and soon the duo again left for their destiny which was Tails's lab.
The two didn't have to wait for long as they soon reached a massive complex big enough to match seven or eight malls that had hundred of roads and aircraft hangers in it.
As soon as they flew closer, they were greeted not with a warm welcome but with hundreds of guns aimed right at their faces but the turrets vanished back into the walls as if they never existed as soon as Silver's face came into view.
The duo then slowly descended to one of the hangers and a spherical droid was already there to meet them.
They watched it came closer and next second it was right in front of them. A familiar voice came from the droid as a face appears on it's screen.
Tails: You took your time coming here didn't you?
Silver: What can I say except I needed some fresh air.
Tails: *sighs* Follow the drone. The others have already arrived and hour ago.
Finishing his words, Tails disconnected from the drone and let the AI take over it as both Sonic and Silver were led through the facility before finally reaching a wide lift.
The lift had a face recognition and password panel so silver had to go forward and open it up while Sonic just sat there with his eyes open as he looked around the facility.
The facility was painted purely of black colour, not to the level of pitch black but enough to blend somethings. There were also quite a bit of people that looked like the average researchers from a movie and a few people like cooks and guards going around for their jobs.
He was then woken up from his daze by the sound of the lift doors opening and was carried in by silver.
Silver: *mocking Sonic* You look awfully stupid looking around like that. Weren't you the one who scrapped this place a dozen or more times?
Sonic: Well I was admiring Tails's work, he did a good job renovating this robotic hell.
Silver: That he did, Took him quite some money but hey, that's pretty change for the richest guy on the planet right?
Sonic: *stunned* You must be kidding me right? On the whole planet?
Silver: Yup. Your little buddy needed funds to find you when you went missing. So he straight took over half the technological companies in two years and practically became the new better eggman.
For a second Sonic imagined Tails sitting in a egg vehicle pod and was like "Yup, suits him well." Only for him to be brought back to reality as silver continues.
Silver: You know Sonic. When I went into the shard.. *Completely serious* I saw a version of you, me and Shadow.. How do you explain their presence when I am right here?
Sonic: *slightly sad* Not everyone in the shard are real people, but I can guarantee you none of them are our enemies.
Silver felt a weight lift of his shoulder as he finally relaxed from the questions that have been haunting him for the past two days.
The duo then decided to continue their conversation regarding what had happened after Sonic's disappearance in the second wave of virus.
There were a few new things he learnt.
First, the real Sally died, not because of virus but because the alloyans blew up the whole capital city of Acorn by overloading the power plant to absurd degrees.
Second, The association is ruled by those first generation of adapters from over a decade before that decided to together form some sort of anti-government.
The association tried to revolt once but was brought completely to it's knees by the army and the remanents of the freedom fighters.
Now it has become a branch of government regulations over the Adapters and deals with all the laws related to them.
The third and final thing was that quite a lot of people actually escaped to the twilight cage and a lot meant a lot as over thirty percent of the survivors managed to escape there with the help of Knuckles before the virus corrupted him to a feral beast.
Just as the two were talking, the lift stopped and that signals their arrival, so the duo both went silent again, ready to face anything that maybe about to come their way.